Support Center

Re: Hi-Res Provenance

Patrick Case
Jan 02, 2017 03:37PM EST

Dear Friends:

I have a further question about the provenance of your hi-res downloads. I notice that some offerings from the same house (Blue Note) carry different notes. In some cases the following note can be found:

"This album is a high-resolution digital transfer of material originating from an analogue recording. It may be limited in bandwidth and dynamic range by the technology available at the time of its original creation, and is offered as a documentation of a historical release."

In other cases, there are merely technical and historical notes. Does the absence of a note, like the one above, mean that you have no reservations about bandwidth etc?

We analyze all incoming PCM audio for its utilization of the available frequency bandwidth and bit resolution, as defined by the sampling rate and bit resolution specifications of each file. Based on the results of this analysis, we add comments to the “Technical Notes” field when applicable. For example, the album "Páginas de um Sonho” by "New Joint” (http://www.prostudiomasters.com/album/page/8965) carries the following notes:

The first part of the first line defines the format in which each title has been released. Comments such as those found in the latter three lines are generated from our analyses, as are others you may encounter regarding limited bandwidth utilization, monophonic material, or recordings originating from an analogue source medium. In general, if no comments appear in the “Technical Notes” section, then the album has been released in the format (or formats) we have found to be the most appropriate to the material contained therein.

Albums which originate from analogue sources or predate high-resolution digital recording most often do carry a note regarding their provenance, in order to alert our customers of potential artifacts, while also encouraging the use of track previews to subjectively evaluate the sonic quality of the album before completing a purchase. However, it may be important to mention that if the original recording was captured before approximately the year 2000, the recording was most likely transferred from an analogue storage medium. Albums predating high-resolution digital recording should therefore only be purchased with the understanding that they may contain some artifacts related to their analogue delivery, storage, and/or production media.